Within the field of sensors, many scenarios involve the generation of a panoramic fields, such as merging a sequence of images captured by a camera that together depict a panoramic image of a landscape. Other domains in the field of sensors may also result in the generation of a panoramic field comprising an aggregation of fields captured by a sensor across a panorama of a physical space, such as a panoramic sonogram captured by a sonar sensor or a thermal panorama indicating temperatures captured by a thermal detector.
A user may generate a panoramic field by capturing a series of fields, and then manually aligning the sequence of fields to form a projection. Sensors may also assist the user in generating a panoramic field, e.g., by instructing the user to capture a particular sequence of fields, and then applying a landmark-based alignment technique to register respective fields. For example, the sensor may instruct the user to begin capturing fields from the one edge to the other edge of the panorama, and may then endeavor to align the edges of consecutive fields through the application of various field evaluation techniques, e.g., by comparing an edge of each field with the corresponding edge of the next field (e.g., instructing the user to capture a sequence of fields in a horizontal sequence from the right edge of the panorama to the left edge of the panorama, and then endeavoring to align the left edge of each field with the right edge of the succeeding field). This alignment may involve comparing the contents of the corresponding edges, and seeking to identify one or more landmarks depicted in both fields that indicate the degree of overlap of the fields. For example, if the data comprising respective fields is represented as visual data, the landmarks may comprise discernible high-contrast edges, distinctive shapes, or discrete bright or dark spots that may be identified in respective fields and overlapped to identify the relative alignment of the fields. The sensor may also assist the user in capturing the fields, e.g., by displaying an edge of a preceding field in the margin of the LCD viewfinder, thereby enabling the user to align the current field with respect to the preceding field. The fields may then be “stitched” by overlapping consecutive fields based on the corresponding landmarks and trimming the fields into a panoramic field.